"THE COLLEGES OF CAROLINA 
A HUMILIATING RECORD The Current Topics Club. 


' North Carolina after two and a half ‘ouWhat these college figures mean was 


“benturies of history has college plants | the burden of Dr. L. R. Wilson’s ad- | 
and equipments valued at $14,008,771. dress to the Current Topics Club at 
This is the total of the figures turned | Rocky Mount the other night. 


“jn te the department of Rural Social ‘This club is a unique open forum, 
| WSel@nee at the State University by the’ | and its like, ought to be in a hundred | 
authorities of 31 white colleges, junior | counties of the state. 

wolleges, technical training schools, and_ And Dr. Wilson’s'address is so gr aphic 

the University. ; | | and stirring that we are passing it on in 

‘Itis almost exactly the wealth we | full to our readers. 

IEoretues by our sweet potato crop alone | 
| in a single year. : | OUR CRIPPLED COLLEGES 
te The plant and equipments of the Uni- The outcome of three matters of tre- 
_ versity of California are valued at two | -mendous importance engages your 
' and a half million ddllars more than the | | thought tonight. Almost in spite of 

| thirty-one college properties of North | yourselves at this dinner hour your 

peerenne all put together. «minds are constantly turning back to 
- The total annual working income of | them and weighing them. They are (1) 
: our. thirty-one colleges is $2,434,646. the holding and underwriting of the to- 
| We spend 20 millions a year to keep _ bacco and cotton crops of North, Caro- | 
' our motor cars going and less than two lina in sucha way as to. increase the 
é and a half million a year to keep our | prosperity of the men and women who 
if _ colleges going. The working income of | toiled in their production; (2) the decis- 
the University of Michigan alone iga_ ion by ballot tomorrow ofthe tax pro- | 

' half million dollars more than the com- gram of the State; and (3) the verdict. 

dined i income of all the hey of North of the nation upon the League of Na- 
[ ‘Carolina. | tions, which, whether with resetvations 
_ Thestudents enrolled in our thirty-| or modifications, I trust will yet become 

one colleges this fall number 10,586, | the great new document of world peace 
‘and the applicants turned away for lack; and human liberty. | 
| of room were 2,308. These are the ex-| Tonight I wish todivert your thought 
| act figures reported by responsible col-| from these matters to one of like im- 
lege officials. | port, namely, the critical situation, the , 

_ Which is to say, nearly one of every| frightful congestion, the woful lack of 

five students who sought to enter failed| plants and funds in the thirty-odd col-| 
to get into the colle they fondly} leges and junior colleges of North Car- | 
chose. | olina dedicated to the higher education | 

At present our Fidcepee high schools | of your sons and daughters. I want you) 
are graduating students at the rate of | to consider with me our bumper crop of 
_ 3,000 a year, and the colleges of their | high school graduates which, for lack 
choice have this fall closed their doors | | of educational warehouses, laboratories, 
pt 2,308 of them. | dibtaries, and underwriting organiza- 
It is a college situation that is well! | tions, is not being properly moved into 

‘nigh unbelievable. It is wholly unen- the ultimate channels of material and 

durable. And if it cannot instantly be! spiritual prosperity for North Carolina— 

_ cured, we eught never again to et a matter, if I mistake not, as funda- 

about « our amazing agricultural wealth mental as taxation, and the proper so-| 
and rank, or our industxial development) lution of which will result in the further | 
} and. leadership in. the South, or our: pre-| liberation of North Carolina’s League 
mic the payment of of Youth for high service to the state. 


As business and professional men you 
wn may not have realized that your college | 
licies} aL authorities are facing an ‘fAncational 


Zocky Mount. They, too, ar 
Soa st 


total of 10,585. stadents. 


(1) The total amount] 
|| invested i in | the thirty-odd college plants | 
of the state is the ridiculously small 
sum of $14, 000, 000 ‘hind Their ee 
working income i s than $2,600, 000. Ms 
all told. (8) 'Thei O pemitoricy with 
four students to the room in many in- 
stances, are packed and jammed with a 
While (4) the 
records of their ‘registrars and secre- 
taries show that for lack of room they. 
have turned away 2, he applicants for 
admission this fall. Recta 

They understand A ot tee the high 
schools of the State are just | now be- 
ginning to function at high | speed. Five’ 
years ago only 800 students were grad- 
uated from four-year high schools, 
Over three ‘thousand were graduated 
last June. Within the next five years 
the number will be. doubled or trebled. 
They see a crop ‘whose acreage ‘cannot 
be cut, and which will further over- 
'whelm them unless succor comes i 
stantly and in full measure. a 


‘ Adequate Salaries ye 
In undertaking , 
our colleges Bnd: t 


|| facts. as these: 


in | 
have 


legislatures. They find 
has vial hot @ one cause oy 


fifty per ae: serio eh | 
mum. rewards for skilled 


less th , 


‘her alumni 


_[jpehool have sprung up around your own 
\\hearth stones.. They are yours, and 


4 


‘isn ’t an easy or pleneent ‘thing iG say. 
hey find when they. put. on cam- 
‘paigns for maintenance funds and build- | 
ings, that the State has not yet fully 
awakened to the. meaning of a thor- 
ough-going, adequate educational pro- 
‘gram. We have not backed our pro- 
fessions of belief in higher education 
‘with our dollars. The meager $14,000, - 
000 invested in college buildings and 
laboratories and libraries and equip-| 
ment tells the story. And further tes- 
timony is added by the fact that the 
University of Michigan has a. working | 
‘income of over $3,000,000 representing | 
an investment of $60,000,000 at 5 per. 
cent and that a college like Dartmouth . 


faculty. 

If you will permit me, I shall ask you 
some of the questions you should 
asking yourselves. First, what do oie 
colleges mean when they say that they 


ber? What does. Meredith mean when | 
it says it turned away 100, or Trinity 


lina. College for Women = 250, or Flora 


Queen’s 144, or Davenport 71? Cér- 
|| tainly it does not mean that 2,308 boys 
and girls were unable ‘to enter some 
college, because, in many instances,’ 


one institution it was sought in another 
and another until an opening finally was 
found. But it does mean that in hun- 
could announce in June gifts and lega-| 
cies amounting to more than $1,500,000, | 
ace lh “of the thirty-odd colleges of | | ter specific colleges found it impossjble 


to ca out their cherished plans. 
North Carolina have a total working | AGL. some had to go to iy ataresn 
‘income of less than $2,500,000. 


and so may be lost in later years to 
Again, our colleges find that their || North Carolina, a loss which the State , 
alumni were not organized to leap in- 


can no more afford to sustain than losses 
stantly into the breach when the evil through freight rate discriminations 
hour was first upon them. While Har- 


| wealths and Pec USGN our own. a 
| The picture I want you to get is this. 
vard and Princeton and’ Cornell and | On Commencement day in June Presi- 


Smith and Bryn Mawr and more than | dent Chase of the University announced, | 


that every room on the campus was al- 
ready taken by upper-classmen before 
applications from the incoming fresh= 
man were placed in the mails. 


a hundred other Northern and Western 
institutions and state legislatures were 
‘putting on drives for increased endow- 
ment or appropriations from public 
funds, ‘Trinity and ‘Wake Forest, and | 
‘the A. and E. , were just announcing the 
appointment of full-time alumni secre-_ 


taries, officers which numbers of other | 
.colleges of the State still do not have, 
because they haven’t the money! 

And etl: connected with these 
facts they ~ weover — 
Roekefeller_ — cd 


took the trains to go in person to this 
|and that and the other institution to 
hunt downaroom ‘‘for just one more 
student.’’ One boy in Monroe wrote 26 
letters before he found aroom, and a 
‘girl in an-eastern county found only 


\ 


‘ten to that could take her in. 

__ It means that some students whom the 
_ State had inspired to equip themselves 
' fully, grew tired of this desperate hunt | 

land gave up this greatest of all the 


leges” of the poole our local institu- quests of youth. This happened right 

| Mons we aady, except inafew ; : : : 

Tmstant ivantage of this | here in North Carolina, which, with all 

b arce. e on a eee of its vaunted agricultural wealth, stands 

potas a “ . eir i ives || fourth from the bottom in the scale of f inexperian 
together, Meer to raise Palacicg. how to | public school accomplishment. making 18 


reeruit thee teaching staffs with proper. 


new material, how to secure funds to 
build dormitories, and laboratories, and 
dining halls, and libraries and classrooms 


on 


eof. your sons and daughters 
1ers and sisters—these are the 
ps any college presidents 
trustees have been con- 
i for _ which they mu t find 
ition. a ES hid. i 


hk be 


your own city high ||; 


|| your responsibility does not end when || 
you bid them goodbye, hand them a || 
check, and turn them over to a college : 


turned away 2,308 applicants in Septem- || 


75, or Davidson 175, or the North Caro- | i 
|| McDonald 205, or Wake Forest 40, or | 


when entrance could not be obtained in | 


dreds of cases students who had planned | 
their courses in high schools to. en-' 


which tend to enrich other common- ! 


David- | 
son in mid-summer had to say_ that its | 
rooms were running oyer, and parents 


| 
| beautiful as to. 
ards in a work-a.d 


eal workin - incor 
year provide thi _type 
tion? Can they stack up it 


portant particular with 
Haverford and Wesley 
and hundreds of ot 


tions, but will confine my 
Iwas partic 
one. freshman. mm 
lyear, , 

three weeks aske 


| his 


four out of 28 southern colleges WYit- | mr 


preceding J : 
another institu on 
i 


fourth was a professor 
leted his work f 


4 


A iow aay 


i Sntia ew 


i 


ie? 


bi 


; ; ue of library. rces. 
ur college libraries a 


/1000 volumes to their collec- 


‘colleges, junior colleges and technical 
_ training schools the new library volumes 
_added during the year range from 10 to 
781. Contrast these figures with those 
_of Dartmouth, and Williams, and Smith, 
|and Bryn Mawr, and Harvard, and the 
| University of Michigan which add from 
8,000 to 40,000 volumes a year! 


* Working Incomes too Small 


these. It involves the working incomes 
of our) colleges which can be put back 
into the instruction and cultural enrich- 
ment of students. You understand that 
colleges do not declare money dividends. 
On the contrary, they put every cent 
they can, through scholarships, and 
fellowships, and lectureship, and equip- 
‘ment, back into your boys and girls. 
Think of colleges with working incomes 


} dent;' can our colleges with these a- 

‘mounts to spend upon their students, 

| give back to them as much cultural en- 
| richment as your sons and daughters 

| ought to receive?’ Can they carry out 
programs through which the youth of 
‘North Carolina can be brought in touch 

with the thinkers and leaders in the 

various fields of technical or scholarly 
or artistic attainment? Do they compare 
favorably in these respects with Will- 

jams which has a working income that 
enables it to spend $495 annually on, 
each student who enters its doors? Or. 
with Haverford which has $750 or with , 
more than ahundred other institutions | 
throughout theNorth and West that have. 
working incomes perstudent that.ayer- 
‘age from 50 to 200 per cent more than, 
those of the colleges in North Carolina?) 


ces, || 
ded 


tions during 1918-19. In eight of our | 


‘that range from $130 to $271 per stu- | 


i e figures already submitted. 
an emphatic no. I shall answer the s 
ond with two observations. ke 

A very thoughtful gentleman said to 
‘me a few days ago that cotton had en- 


riched every man that touched it except. 


the men who produced it. What he had 
in mind was that England and New 


England, through technical knowledge, 


til reeent years turned the dividends 
which shotild go to Southern farmers 
into Northern pocket books. Imagine 
what it would mean today to North 


| were immediately to emerge who, with- 


; serve Board, could conserve, through or- 
| ganization, through manufaeture, 

| through export, through financial stabil- 
ization, our two record crops of cotton 


|ment of the men who produced them. 
The seeond observation is this. Today 
| North Carolina is at the beginning of 


what should be a tremendous road-build- — 
ing program, one that ealls for the ex- 


penditure of millions and millions of 
dollars. inions vary as to the amount 


required, It hasbeen placed at $650, 


really to know what the figure should 


logues departments of highway engi- 
neering for the traiming of town and 
country and state road emgimeers. And 
the headship of one of these has been 
vacant for 18 months because a man 
‘who knows asphalt and conerete and 
‘cement and sand and elay and culverts 
and bridges and costs and sinking funds 
and road taxes, -- who knows them from 
A to Z, and can teach them -- cannot 
‘be secured to fill the vacant position at 
the salary of $3600 which represents the 


have reaped the reward of our cotton - 
planting. The Worcester Polytechnic © 
Institute of Massachusetts and the fi- 


_ Another question follows hard after ‘MAhelal concerns of New York have un- 


Carolina and the South if trained men 


| out futile recourse to the Federal Re- 


and tobaceo to the finaneial enrich-. 


100, at $100,000,000, at $150,000, 006. : 
The significant fact is thatmo one seems | 


Peaey Aaa inte Seco or mee atone, 

uild. And in th of this stupend- (¢ , unless t 
ous undertaking and this woful laek of eT Ciao spirit 
clear understanding, only twe imstitu- = eral Assembly 


tions in the State anmounce in their cata-_ 


a fi 
se 


| struction is to k 
_ | oratories and lik 
|| to be given dept 
| pleteness through con 
ter minds e fi 


make brick without 
perience as busine 
cannot move tobacco 


‘their instant aic 


7, 
f 


Soh 


maximum of the regular salary scale of 


‘the institution concerned. 


i 


